MovieGuide
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This new comedy from the creators of The Inbetweeners, Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, follows the mostly off-the-pitch misadventures of three young footballers at a fictional Premier League club. In addition to the three young actors – Shaquille Ali-Yebuah, Jack McMullen, Jake Short – in the main roles, the film also features six-time Emmy nominee Will Arnett as their eccentric club chairman. The creators shared the origins of the series with Insider Extra
Where did the idea for The First Team come from?
Damon Beesley: As far as I remember, we started toying with the concept of a comedy set around professional football after we shot the second season of The Inbetweeners. The idea crystallised that summer following a chance encounter Iain had with a footballer while on a trans-Atlantic flight – remember them? I’ll let Iain fill you in on the meeting. I particularly enjoyed Iain discovering midway through the chat that the footballer played for Queen’s Park Rangers, the team he supports. Not only did Iain not recognise him, but he then went on to find out he’d been voted player of the year for that season.
Iain Morris: About 11 years ago, I was on a flight to see my then girlfriend, now wife, in LA. I was sat next to a very nice, heavily tattooed man. We got chatting and it turned out he was a footballer. The season had ended the day before and he – finally – had a holiday after 11 months of work. I was a huge football fan, but talking to him about his day-to-day existence was fascinating and revealed all sorts of things I never knew, and had never even considered. One of the main things was that often training can only last about an hour, so for most days they have an extraordinary amount of time on their hands during the day. I came back and told Damon about it and we discussed making something about footballers, and what it would be like to work in what was an increasingly rare almost allmale environment. Then we made the third series of The Inbetweeners, and two films, and Damon made White Gold and we kind of forgot about it.
How do you collaborate together? Damon:
Despite living on separate continents, we still spend a remarkable amount of writing time face-to-face. I’d describe the process as a mixture of comfort eating, scribbling on post-it notes and odd tangential conversations. I’m sure we could probably write remotely on Google Docs or some such app, but it turns out we enjoy hanging out together almost as much as we enjoy dark chocolate digestives.
Iain: The process for The First Team was very similar to The Inbetweeners. We get together in a room and chat about characters and ideas very vaguely i.e. maybe there’s an owner character, maybe there’s a foreign player. Then we do a lot of research – for The First Team we interviewed players at length, as well as managers, owners, ex-players, chairmen, kit men, PR people – and then sit down again and see if what we want to say is reflected in the reality. Then we try to map out what each episode might look like.
How did you go about casting the three leads for the series?
Damon: We had no idea who we wanted for the roles, so to begin with the search was exhaustive both in the UK and the States. We’d always wanted the character of Mattie to be American. It seemed important that he had an outsider quality to him. The MLS [Major League Soccer] differs to the English top flight in a few crucial ways. Firstly, US sport has always had a collegiate tradition which means that most sports professionals have to complete their formal education to a university level. Secondly, while there are a handful of well-paid big stars in the MLS, the rest of the squads earn far less than their Premier League contemporaries. So, we wanted our Mattie to have a wide-eyed perspective on the English game so that he could both marvel and scoff at the privileges on offer.
There are many guest appearances on the series, from Will Arnett to Phil Wang. How did Will get involved?
Damon:
We’ve both been huge fans of Will’s since Arrested Development and 30 Rock. I think Netflix originally put us in touch just after White Gold had aired in the US as Will was a fan. Somehow, we successfully bamboozled him into joining us on our next show.
What were your favourite scenes to shoot? Iain:
There was a farewell scene that was a favourite. Night, lots of supporting artists, up against the clock, quite cold. But those big scale things are really what you want to be doing for a show like this.
Damon: A Man City and England superstar popped by set one day! Shaq had always maintained that he was good friends with Raheem Sterling. We naturally assumed he was bullsh*tting. After wrapping late one night, an assistant director came over to say Shaq would love to introduce us to Raheem. Even then we gave him short shrift – as if Raheem Sterling was going to be waiting out the back of a cash and carry just outside of Chester on a miserable October night: which he was. I think Iain and I both said something awkwardly fawning to him before sloping off to our cars, genuinely star struck. So there you have it. Never doubt Shaq.